Word: questionable
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...were quite prepared for what happened. During a debate about making the political system more democratic, a novel notion came up. Why not unite people who support perestroika into something resembling the popular-front movements that lobbied for social reforms in Europe during the 1930s? For a moment, the question hung in the air. Nothing like it had ever been tried in the Soviet Union. Telephone lines soon jangled with enthusiastic offers of support. When the broadcast ended at midnight, excited participants remained in the Tallinn studio to draft a manifesto...
While it would be an exaggeration to say thin is in, there's no question that Soviets are becoming more conscious of how they look. "My husband told me I'm fat and dowdy," says a 30-year-old schoolteacher between sit-ups at the Krylatskoya clinic. "We've been married ten years, and he's started jogging. So I have to lose weight too." Galina Promyslova, 36, a culinary technician, shakes her head disgustedly and says, "I want to get rid of these hips...
Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!" The call to prayer echoes forth from a minaret in Tashkent, as it has from mosques throughout the 13 centuries of Islam. "Was it loud enough?" asks the mullah who will lead the prayers. That is an eminently reasonable question, since in the Soviet Union no muezzin is allowed to use a loudspeaker. The inquiry is also metaphorical. In the U.S.S.R.'s fourth largest city and leading Islamic center, as elsewhere across the nation, believers are cautiously regaining their public voice after an oppressively enforced silence...
When the opposition had left, party ideologist Kuznetsov asked John a question: "Tell me, what would happen if you spent the day working for your own magazine and went to work for your competitor in the evening? What would your bosses think of that...
...Ironically, America's worst oil spill occurred just four days before the tenth anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident that choked off the development of nuclear-power plants and led to growing reliance on coal and oil. The bill for that decision is beginning to come due. The question that will increasingly haunt energy-policy debate is this: What degree of environmental risk should be accepted for the sake of adding domestic fuel supplies to a nation that has never been able or willing to practice sufficient conservation and yet rightly views dependence on foreign-oil imports...